Land

The most common way of getting metals out of the earth is by opencast extraction. Following this process through, you can see how it impacts first on the land, then on water and finally the air.

The overburden of soil and ordinary rock is removed by huge machines. While making operations profitable, they are also environmentally destructive often removing complete hills or leaving great holes in the ground.

Once the metallic ore is removed, there are two stages in the milling process. Firstly the mined rock is crushed or ground. Then chemicals are used to 'float out' the metal from the ore. The fine waste from the separation process ends up in a pit, known as a tailings pond. As the metallic ores extracted have become less rich in their metal content, the amount of tailings has increased.

The slag produced by the smelting process is dumped in landfill.